Organization of work in oncology – multidisciplinarity, multiprofessionality, quality and multiplicity

Abstract

Background: Health care system in Slovenia has not fully defined all liabilities to cancer patients at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. No official documents describing precisely the mission of oncology and its tasks to be performed at each individual level have been so far available. Given that we are lacking an adequate national cancer control program and that the management of a cancer patient in Slovenia is included in the compulsory health insurance system. Our health care as well as health insurance policy should have long ago accepted the challenge of taking more decisive steps. The quality of management of cancer patients is as much dependent on medical proficiency (knowledge) as on organization of work at the primary and secondary levels. The major critique addresses particularly undergraduate and postgraduate education, i. e. the fields that have not been touched by the changes in the epidemiologic view of morbidity for several decades.

Conclusions: The prerequisites in oncology, such as multidisciplinarity and multiprofessionality, are considered as new added values which should have a direct effect on the quality and multiplicity of individuals and institutions that are likely to be included in diagnostic and therapeutic networks. In oncology in Slovenia, the views on multidisciplinarity are not consistent, multiprofessionality has not yet entered our conscious awareness, quality assurance is often out of control, whereas multiplicity is history-based. It is high time that health care policy steps in and takes adequate measures in the management of cancer patients. The first prerequisite is to set up a national cancer control program and, of course, to appoint supervisors who will be in charge of (as the term indicates itself) supervising the implementation of the program. Its smooth implementation can only be ensured by applying a uniform information system, thereby also assuring a uniform evaluation of costs.